Los Angeles subway dig finds prehistoric stash

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists have long known that long before hipsters and tourists were crowding Los Angeles' trendy Miracle Mile district, prehistoric animals were doing the same.

Now, thanks to a subway dig, they're discovering that sea lions may have been swimming nearby as well.

An exploratory subway shaft dug just down the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has uncovered a treasure trove of fossils in the land where saber-tooth cats and other prehistoric animals once roamed, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday (http://lat.ms/1eElM18 ).

They include mollusks, asphalt-saturated sand dollars and possibly the mouth of a sea lion dating to 2 million years ago, a time when the Pacific Ocean extended several miles farther inland than it does today.

"Here on the Miracle Mile is where the best record of life from the last great ice age in the world is found," paleontologist Kim Scott said.

The area, dotted today with museums, restaurants, boutiques and apartment buildings, also includes the world-famous La Brea Tar Pits. It was there that mammoths and saber-toothed cats got stuck in the pits' oozing muck, which preserved their skeletons for millennia.

The shaft, dug ahead of work scheduled next year to extend a subway line across LA's west side, is now revealing far more material, including geoducks, clams, snails, mussels and even a 10-foot limb from a pine tree of the type normally now found in central California's woodlands.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working with Cogstone Resource Management and the nearby George C. Page Museum to identify and preserve the prehistoric cache.

More such discoveries are expected when excavation work begins on a nearby subway station.